Sir John Birkenhead was appointed Licenserof the Press, and he was succeeded by Sir Roger L'Estrange.
Occasional marks of the Licenser on the manuscript, most notably opposite Shark's lines about statesmen at the end of Act I, are all underscored in the typescript of the play.
All marks of the Licenser are in italics; all words or letters interpolated by the editor are in brackets; all stage directions are in parentheses.
The whole objection to the Licenser is simply that he is under no regulations whatever.
If the power of the Licenser had been laid under proper regulations, all would have been right.
It was said, too, That to bring the Stage under the Restraint of a Licenser was leading the way to an Attack upon the Liberty of the Press.
If then it be "the business of a good judge to enlarge his authority," was it not in the licenser the utmost clemency and forbearance, to extend fourteen days only to twenty-one?
There lies no obligation upon the licenser to grant his sanction to a play, however excellent; nor can Mr. Brooke demand any reparation, whatever applause his performance may meet with.
Another grievance is, that thelicenser assigned no reason for his refusal.
The poet seems to think himself aggrieved, because the licenser kept his tragedy in his hands one-and-twenty days, whereas the law allows him to detain it only fourteen.
The author was pilloried, fined, and imprisoned; his publisher condemned in the penalty of five hundred pounds, and barred for ever from printing and selling books, and the licenser removed and punished.
It is not surprizing that the Licenser objected to such passages as the description of Miss Giggle's "nudities," but his frequent objections to topical and personal references took all the bite out of Macklin's satire.
After this discouragement, he also had trouble with the Licenser so that his comedy Man of the World was not presented until 1781, twenty years after a portion of it first appeared at Covent Garden.
Nevertheless, being a very amusing play, it passed the licenser with the exception of a reference to impotence as a ground for divorce which no English actress would have ventured on in any case.
But this was, after all, rather in the character of editor, whose business it is to see that nothing improper goes into the paper, than in that of press licenser in the sense in which the Areopagitica had denounced it.
For licenser there was now, the Archbishop of Canterbury to wit, for religious literature.
It had been opened, without competent licence, by Odell, the dramatist, and subsequently deputylicenser of plays under the famous Act which Walpole introduced and Chesterfield opposed.
For though a licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordinary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office and his commission enjoins him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received already.
A question was raised at the Board whether the office of wine licenser were not a monopoly.
His enjoyment of his patent as wine licenser had been suspended, that it might be considered if the post were a monopoly.
Mr. Joseph Caryl, the licenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne.
The book being examined, resolved that it should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, and that the king should be moved to dismiss the licenser from his employment.
Bohun the licenser was brought to the bar of the house, and discharged upon his own petition, after having been reprimanded on his knees by the speaker.
The Commons complain that the amount of the fee which the licenser may demand is not fixed.
In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book which bore the name of an author or publisher.
To print such a tract without the approbation of the licenser was illegal.
It may perhaps not be impossible, even at this distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidence in such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would have astonished the unfortunate licenser himself.
The future licenser of the press, who was throwing his net to haul in all these fish at a cast, took advantage of this project, which at once was levelled at the freedom of the trade, and the freedom of the press.
Such a law may have been beneficial at times, but during the seventeenth century it was another instrument of tyranny, since no Licenser would allow anything to be printed against his particular church or government.
There was a law in Milton's day forbidding the printing of any work until it had been approved by the officialLicenser of Books.
In 1695 the Press was emancipated from its thraldom, and the office of licenser ceased to exist.
His successor Bohun was deprived of his orffice aslicenser and sent to prison for allowing a pamphlet to be printed entitled King William and Queen Mary, Conquerors.
The powers of thelicenser were now much more strictly exercised, and the Mercuries gave up the ghost in shoals.
In any case, the Licenserfound much to object to in "Alasco.
It was with considerable reluctance, however, that the Chamberlain, in his character of Licenser of Playhouses, divested himself of the paternal authority he had so long exercised.
Johnson assisting his cause by the publication of an ironical pamphlet--"A Vindication of the Licenser from the malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr. Brooke.
At this time and long afterwards, the Licenser regarded it as his chief duty to protect the court against all possibility of attack from the stage.
He had constituted himself a Censor Morum; a character in which the modern Licenser of Plays still commends himself to our notice.
Thence forward he was known as the Licenser of Playhouses and Examiner of Plays.
Milton had always contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "licenser" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
